1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to multi-applications portable cards designed to be inserted temporarily into a card reader forming part notably of a micro-computer or PC (personal computer). It relates more particularly to 68-pin PCMIA format cards standardized by the Personal Computer Memory Card International Association, 1030B East Duane Avenue, Sunnyvale, Calif.
2. Description of the Prior Art
These cards could, in the near future, replace diskettes or other magnetic type mass storage means as well as chip-card type portable electronic cards.
Indeed, their high mass-storage memory capacity (in the range of some millions of bytes), their compactness (in the range of 5 cm.times.8 cm for a thickness of 3 mm) and their speed of access which is substantially higher than that of magnetic diskettes make them an ideal information medium.
However, for reasons related to the constitution of the magnetic medium used, the PCMCIA cards are not secure. The information that they contain is considerably more accessible than the information that would be contained notably in a chip card.
In order to overcome this drawback, it was first of all proposed to introduce a standard chip card into a PCMCIA card, by making a connection between the chip of the chip card and the data-processing system of the PCMCIA card. An approach such as this is described, for example, in the French patent application published under No. 2 686 172.
However, this attractive solution is a limited one. Indeed, the presently used chip cards are designed only for one application since, although a chip can, in theory, contain a quantity of information sufficient for several applications, the development of the multi-application chip cards makes it necessary for the different suppliers to arrive at agreements that are practically impossible to obtain in the present economic context.
The idea then arose of positioning several chip cards with the PCMIA chip card of the type described in the above-mentioned patent application. However, this approach is not viable since, with a standard chip card being 0.8 mm thick, the use for example of nine chip cards with a PCMCIA card such as this would result in a unit whose minimum thickness would be about 9.times.0.8 mm 3 mm=10.2 mm. This is considerable for a so-called portable card that would have to fit into a coat pocket.
Furthermore, a U.S. Pat. No. 5,049,728, has proposed the use of multiple-chip cards. However, this approach cannot be envisaged because the body of these cards is very complicated to make, and it is difficult to handle the chips thereon.
It is an object of the present invention to overcome these drawbacks related to connection and complexity of handling by proposing a PCMCIA card with a rack capable of receiving a card such as this.